Author Q&A with Sara Flemington

Those who have tried their hand at writing are probably aware that November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). While the team at Nightwood Editions recognizes that novels are never finished in just one month, we want to encourage prospective novelists to work on their books this month by posting some advice from our authors. To kick us off, we got Sara Flemington to participate in a Q&A about her 2025 novel RIP Scoot.

From where did you write the majority of your book? 

In my apartment in Toronto, at my desk in front of the window in the early hours of the morning. I’d watch the sky change from dark to light while my cat Cheese (RIP) perched beside me, watching the pigeons flock above the rooftops of the neighbouring apartment buildings. He was a very dutiful assistant. He had some great ideas, too, many of which made it into the book.

Did anything surprise you during the writing process? 

Pretty much everything the narrator, Austin, said. I think I was just as surprised by his leaps in logic as every other character in the book seemed to be.

What books did you turn to while writing? 

I enjoyed reading through some classic mystery and detective writers—Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins, Dashiell Hammett, for example—while I was writing RIP Scoot. When they talk about this book people often reference the “Pepe Silvia” scene from an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; I’d like to think my work draws inspiration from various forms of contemporary art. 

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Tune out the noise and focus on truly opening up. Be weird, silly, vulnerable, and make it a goal to make yourself laugh. Don’t focus on the end, or what’s going to happen after you’ve finished. You’re only going to write so many books in your short time here on Earth, so make the process count.

What is a fun fact about yourself? 

I now moonlight (daylight, dusk and dawnlight) as a flight attendant. Same views, different perspective, I suppose.

If your book were a meal, what would it be?

Ramen noodles eaten straight from the pan with a side of Party Mix cat treats.

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Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meet The Big Lebowski in this literary mystery that asks us to examine what stories, real or fiction, become the metaphors we use for working through our own challenges and uncertainties.

Twentysomething Austin lives alone in a crumbling office-turned-studio apartment of a former mops, brushes and brooms factory in Toronto. After a deformed and lice-ridden cat turns up at his door, then abruptly dies three weeks later, Austin begins to find frightening coincidences connecting him to a squatter living in his local Walmart, a botanical garden in Missouri, a shipping route from Greece, a muralist in Japan, the world of an online dystopia and more. As the obsession with piecing together the mystery surrounding his dead pet, and the reward the cat is potentially worth, takes over, Austin confronts his financial and family issues, his self-imposed isolation and his abandoned sense of direction. He discovers what purpose this mystery might actually serve in helping him cope with, and potentially recover, all that he’s really lost.

In the end, RIP Scoot is as much a story about an anomalous dead cat as it is a rich, conscientious depiction of grief, complicated relationships and the choices that occur when fighting change is no longer an option.